Lazing in Delirium
by TheLastStroke
Summary: And you watched me leave, a smile dancing on your perfect lips. Because that was what you wanted, really. To pull me under…


Everything is white in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. White is usually a symbol of purity and innocence. But not at St. Mungo's. There, it represents insanity.  
  
Mrs. Malfoy looked drawn and weary as she walked past the gleaming white tiles, up the white marble stairs, and into the white door numbered 373. The ivory walls were blank, and two beds with clean, white sheets and blankets were in the middle of the room. There were no windows, and the door was charmed to open only for Healers and relatives.  
  
Mrs. Malfoy took a seat in an uncomfortable, plastic, white chair next to Mrs. Weasley, who was looking at the people in the beds with a sad smile. The teenagers lay in the beds lazily, staring absently at the ceiling, dressed in white hospital gowns. Mrs. Weasley and Mrs. Malfoy had been visiting their children in room 373 for three months.  
  
The once- carefree Hogwarts students, Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley, who were now aged twenty and nineteen, had been living in St. Mungo's psychiatric ward for months. If they had been Muggles, they would have been given therapy and medication, but they would have been able to continue living. However, the magical world fears diseases of the mind. The Healers and scientists spend years looking for cures other than what they consider to be 'Muggle techniques', but until they find them, they lock the patients away from society.  
  
Mrs. Malfoy looked sadly at her child. He was not insane. He had a fairly common problem. Virginia, well, she was someone to worry about. She was the one who had the less common ailment.  
  
But then, everything about Ginny had been so rare, and compared to her, Draco felt oh-so- mundane. But he loved her. He had been absolutely devoted to her.  
  
Mrs. Weasley smiled as the tragic love story of Draco and Ginny played through in her mind... ________________________________________________________________________  
  
"Drowning," Draco answered truthfully when his room mates asked him what love felt like. "It feels like your first dip into the ocean, that pure and refreshing. And then, you just can't get enough, so you go deeper and deeper, until you realize your too far gone, water has surrounded your lungs, and you are drowning."  
  
And it did seem as though Draco was lost in the waters of charming Ginny Weasley. The two had started dating her fourth year, his fifth. But as obsessed as Draco was with her, Ginny took the relationship in her stride, sometimes barely paying attention to his feelings.  
  
Nonetheless, all the other girls wanted such a relationship, and all the boys envied Draco's ability to be romantic. So it came as a surprise to all, when, in his sixth year, Draco left her.  
  
Everyone wanted to know what had set him off. He hadn't cared when, in the fourth year, she went to the Yule Ball with clumsy Neville Longbottom for the second time instead of him. He hadn't minded when she flirted shamelessly with most of the school's male population. And he could always be heard telling her he loved her, while she would smile softly and say, "I know, Draco."  
  
Draco wouldn't talk about the break- up to anyone, not even Crabbe and Goyle. Ginny, however, seemed unaffected by the whole ordeal, and continued her life. Mrs. Malfoy noticed, over the summer holiday, that Draco had become completely withdrawn, and practically lifeless.  
  
"Sweetie," she had said in a nurturing tone that was very uncharacteristic for the stern Narcissa Malfoy. "I know you don't want to talk about it, but you have to get your feelings out. What you're doing... it's not healthy. So, when you get back to school, if you ever have a moment alone, just talk. Imagine you are talking to Ginny, you can even yell if you want. Just get the feelings out, and you'll find it easier to get over her."  
  
So Draco had taken his mother's advice, and once crisp night, had walked down to lake's edge as the rest of the school slept. And he imagined she was there, and he suddenly found words.  
  
"I'd rather be drowning than this, this slow, painful, death on earth. Even if the water consumed me, I'd be surrounded by something I needed, not this dryness. I'm in my seventh year of school now, but I still spend days like these recalling everything about you. But I think I was sleeping, and you were merely a dream. You were, after all, much too flawless to be real. Now if only you could stop haunting me...  
  
I left you for a reason, you know. I fell so deeply into you, your blood was cycling through my lungs. I never told you that, but I told you I loved you. I said it often, and you would smile wistfully, and say, 'I know, Draco'  
  
Why, why those three words? Couldn't you have ever replaced them with an 'I love you'? Wasn't there ever a time when I meant something to you?  
  
No, I suppose not. If you had loved me, I wouldn't be spinning in these circles, going crazy.  
  
Do you know you were my first love?  
  
I didn't love you because I thought you were beautiful, like the other guys. In fact, I thought nothing of you until my fifth year, when I saw you jump into the lake, in the middle of that storm.  
  
I followed you in, forgetting the rain and ignoring the cold. Then I asked what you were doing, and you smiled, and said that maybe if you swam in the rain, you would become a mermaid.  
  
I fell in love with you after that, your childishness and innocence and playfulness, and I asked you to be mine. I gave you my heart in my outstretched hands, and you carelessly pocketed it.  
  
You said you liked me, you kissed me with feeling, and we went out together. But when I was hurting, you couldn't tell. And every time I saw you, I told you I loved you. And you would smile slowly and say, 'I know, Draco.'  
  
You knew, did you? Well, did you know that those three words pinpricked my flesh every time you spoke them? That finally all the tiny holes melded together in to a bleeding score across my heart?  
  
I don't think you knew that. If you did, maybe you would have left me early on, and not made me suffer losing you. You just had to make sure I knew what I was living without, didn't you?  
  
Well, guess what, Ginny. I'm not living without anything, because I'm not living. I'm a mindless shell with the same scene playing over in my mind.  
  
Its you, Virginia, the mermaid, drowning me, Draco, the lonely fisherman.  
  
Did you know that you were my mermaid? I lost myself in you, I could scarcely breathe, I loved you so much. And then, to save myself, I left.  
  
And you watched me leave, a smile dancing on your perfect lips. Because that was what you wanted, really. To pull me under...  
  
But this isn't really what I had wanted to tell you. No, I wanted to say that I'd rather drown in happiness than suffocate in loneliness, Ginny. I want to tell you I love you, and you would smile that smile and say those three accursed words, I know, Draco." Draco sighed wearily, feeling worn.  
  
What had happened to Ginny this past year? She had never returned his words of affection, but it always seemed that as much as she wanted to, she could not bring herself to love him back. But now, her whole life was out of control. She was given a separate, solo dorm because she had given Hermione Granger a broken arm in a fist fight. She had been caught cheating on tests that, considering her IQ and class participation, should have been a snap for her. She had stealthily stolen money from several students, and lied to her parents in owls.  
  
"Yes, Draco," said a soft, cruel voice, breaking into his thoughts. "It was all my fault. You were simply a boy who had fallen too hard, and I was an uncaring girl. It was all my fault." She repeated, not sounding at all like she meant it. Dean didn't have to turn around to know whose voice that was, yet it had never been that cruel before.  
  
The voice laughed, still soft, almost melodic, but tinged with bitterness.  
  
"The world you live in is so very simple, Draco. All black and white, and everything is as it seems. You say you're dying, but you know nothing of pain. You said you loved me, and I let you believe that you did."  
  
"I know nothing of pain? All of those months, standing dutifully by your side, devoted to you, and not once did you ever care! If that is not pain, darling, nothing is." He said angrily.  
  
"Okay, Draco," Ginny said in that same calm voice, now sounding bored. "Just believe that, if it makes you happy. Believe you loved me."  
  
"Why are you saying this, Ginny?" his voice breaking along with his heart. "I did love you, how could you ever have had doubts about that?"  
  
"Doubts?" she said curiously, as if she didn't understand the word. She got up and began to walk away. "I don't have doubts, I have knowledge. If you ever, for one second, loved me, you would not have told me so often and expected an answer. You would have known that answering was impossible for me."  
  
"Ginny!" he yelled, grabbing her wrist. She didn't turn but merely laughed that same sardonic laugh.  
  
"Yes, Draco, tell me, what is it like to live in your candy cane world?" she smiled cruelly, breaking his heart.  
  
"You say I don't understand, yet you don't explain it to me. Just tell me why, Ginny, and I'll leave you alone. Tell me why, if you didn't love me, did you stay with me for so long?"  
  
And then she glared at him, yanked her wrist away, and began to run up to the castle. But Draco had never been one to accept defeat.  
  
"I won't accept that, Ginny!" he yelled after her. "If nothing is as it seems, then you aren't a mindless heartbreaker! Now tell me the truth!"  
  
And she stopped running, doubled over, gasping for breath in between her panting and maniacal laughter.  
  
"Have you ever heard of antisocial personality disorder, Draco?" she asked softly. He shook his head, feeling like his world had been turned upside down. What the hell was going on?  
  
"It is a psychological disorder that causes its victims to lie, steal, cheat, and feel nothing for other people." She said, sounding as though she was vomiting the words out of a textbook in her stomach. How badly she wanted to feel what love was. She smiled weakly. "They've decided I've got it, and I'm going to be hospitalized. There is nothing I can do about it."  
  
"And... and.." Draco choked, unable to speak, sputtering in consternation.  
  
"And that is why I do not love you."  
  
****  
  
That day, Draco's mind lost all thought, his heart all happiness. He could be seen either slamming his fists into walls, crying shamelessly, or else bouncing of the walls with enthusiasm and euphoria.  
  
Draco had developed bipolar depression, a very serious form of depression that causes its victims to go from one emotional extreme to another.  
  
He had lost her, and then he lost it all. She may have wanted to love him, but she basically didn't have the ability to love.  
  
And now here they were. Alone together in St. Mungo's. One thing to understand, though, is that there minds were basically sane. They filled the lonely, endless hours talking about everything and anything. He could tell you her favorite food, flower, and book. She could tell you what he planned to do the second they were 'cured' and freed. They were to the point of finishing each others sentences, and it would have been cute if in a less horrific situation.  
  
Mrs. Weasley and Mrs. Malfoy got up to leave for the week. They kissed their children softly and assured them that they would return the next weekend.  
  
They walked out slowly, and Mrs. Weasley turned and reached for the doorknob to pull the door closed. She was about to do so when voices from inside the room grabbed her attention, and, motioning to Mrs. Malfoy, the two women peered in through a crack in the door.  
  
A Healer came in and sprayed a lilac smelling perfume in the room as she had been doing every three days for the past few weeks. She hadn't said anything about it, but they had decided it was a magical cure that they were testing on them. They doubted it could work. The Healer left, and Draco turned to Ginny.  
  
"Does she think that we are really that insane..." he began, only to be cut off by her. "That we would not even notice her presence in this empty room?" They looked at each other for a moment, and then began to laugh.  
  
"But I do..." she began again, wiping the tears from her eyes.  
  
"Love the smell of lilac." He finished, looking at her intently.  
  
He was sitting up, looking lively. Virginia stared at him for a moment, considering the past few months in his ever- loving presence. He looked at her, a rare, neutral expression clouding his face.  
  
"Virginia, I love you." He said softly. I should lie to him, she considered slowly. But why, when she knew exactly what she wanted to say?  
  
"I know you do, Draco." He sighed and flipped over as she continued. "And I love you, too."  
  
Mrs. Malfoy and Mrs. Weasley closed the door, smiles on their faces as they walked merrily down the hall. They were happy, even if their children weren't completely cured. That had been, however, and extraordinary improvement.  
  
Maybe there was something to this magical healing after all. Or maybe, magic didn't have anything to do with it...  
  
A/N: Both of the mental illnesses are real and can't really be 'cured' by true love. This fic is just a short escape from the cold, realistic world. Sad that we can't really escape, isn't it? 


End file.
